You were here already

Waking up to a knock on the door, Travis slowly put his feet into his slippers and made his way downstairs. When he opened the door there was no one there. He looked around and saw no one then looked down and saw a little black book. It was a shiny black almost glowing and in a strange never before seen color had the title “ you were here already”.

Going back inside he sat on the couch and pulled back the cover of the book and when he did the room around him changed in an instant and he looked up to see his mother ( who had been dead for 6 months) cooking dinner. She yelled “ Travis, go tell your brother dinner is ready”. He immediately looked down at the book in his hands and the first words were “once upon a time”. He started shaking uncontrollably and closed the book and when he stood up he was back in his lonely home alone. No mother and no smell of fresh dinner on the stove. Sitting back down again he hesitated to pick up the book. He stated at it for what seemed like hours until finally he picked it up again. He opened it again and when he looked up the tv was on and it was the mega millions drawing from 2/7/2017. The balls started to pop up.....4.....27.....36....17....41....and a powerball of 44. Then the tv went off and he heard his mom yell again....” Travis, why are you ignoring me?”. He got up and dropped the book and it fell to the ground sitting open.

He walked into the kitchen and there was his mother just as beautiful as he remembered her from when he was a kid. But how was this possible and what was going on? His mother said” sit down son and eat while your foods still hot”. Sitting down he looks over and notices the calendar on the wall and it says May 1984. He instantly jumped up and ran to the living room and grabbed the book, picked it up and it was open to a random page. He looked down and saw what looked like himself holding a check from the Lottery commission for 750 million dollars. His mom walked up behind him and grabbed the book from his hands and as she slammed it shut there he was standing alone in his living room.

Now he wasn’t sure what was going on but something told him to write down those numbers he had seen on that tv. He jotted them down but thought to himself “ what good does this do me now?”. He took the little piece of paper and put it in the little book like a bookmark. Then he placed the book back on the table and decided to go upstairs to lay back down for a while longer.

When he got to the top of the stairs he noticed that everything seemed a little different. The walls a different color and house just appeared to be larger and a different house all together. Just then his phone rang in his pocket. He answered it “hello”. Then the voice on the other end made him speechless. It was his mother....he struggled to speak as she spoke to him “ are we still on for lunch?” She asked...of course he finally answered with a resounding yes.

When he went outside to get in his beat up 2004 Chevy Malibu he was surprised to find a shiny 2021 Chevy Camero sitting in its place. What happened? How could this be?? He got to the resteraunt and walked in to see his mom waving at him. He walked up and hugged her like he had not seen her in 6 months. She had died from COVID-19 just 6 months earlier having contracted it from the grocery store she worked at to make ends meet. What happened and why was she here now???

He sat down and his mom asked him how his morning has been. The first thing he thought of was to tell her about the little black book left on his doorstep. As he started telling her the story she stopped him in the middle of it and says “ son don’t mess with me, you know that book is the only reason we have what we have today and that you have had it since you were a child”. He thought for a minute and asked what she was talking about. Come to find out when she yanked the book from his hand in 1984 she found a little piece of paper inside with some numbers on it that said powerball 2/7/17. She held on to those numbers for 33 years and played them that night. Sure enough she won the whole thing and because of that she never worked in that store and did not contract COVID-19. It was truly a miracle and it was all because of that little black book.....